Melodrama and Asian Cinema

by Wimal Dissanayake (Editor)

Overview

Cinema is a dominant force in the lives of many people living in Asia, a continent that has a number of distinguished national film industries. A concept central to much of Asian film production is melodrama. This path-breaking study examines the importance of melodrama in the film traditions of Japan, India, China, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Australia. Exploring the various ways that melodrama operates with theoretical sophistication, the various essays contained in this volume shed light on the different traditions of Asian cinema, as well as on the wider cultural discourse in which they participate.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521414654
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	05/28/1993
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Film
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.83(d)

Table of Contents

1. Introduction; 2. Melodrama/subjectivity/ideology: Western melodrama theories and their relevance (or not) to recent Chinese cinema; 3. Symbolic representation and symbolic violence: Chinese family melodrama of the early 1980's; 4. The Goddess. Reflections on melodrama East and West; 5. History and its discontent: melodrama as historical understanding; 6. Melodrama, postmodernism and Japanese cinema; 7. Staging the subject: the melodramatisation of gender in An Actor's Revenge; 8. Insiders and outsiders: cross-cultural criticism and Japanese film melodrama; 9. Psyches, ideologies and melodrama: US and Japan; 10. Andaz; 11. The concept of evil and social order in Indian melodrama: an evolving dialectic; 12. Politics of melodrama in Indonesian cinema; 13. Power, pleasure and desire: the female body in Filipino melodrama; 14. The register of nightmare: melodrama as it (dis)appears in Australian film; 15. Overview: what is American about film study in America?

Editorial Reviews

"This book should be required reading for any student or scholar in film or cultural studies." Journal of Communication

"...the book is a welcome addition to the still scarce library on Asian cinema in English and may provide a source of inspiration for those interested in either melodrama or Asian Cinema." Yang Ye, Journal of Developing Societies

"The essays in Wimal Dissanayake's volume illustrate the importance of melodrama to Chinese film studies. Informed by multiple theoretical models, they offer many interesting...readings of Chinese films." Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars

From the Publisher